Ocean Color - History

History

Remote sensing of ocean colour from space began in 1978 with the successful launch of NASA's Coastal Zone Color Scanner (CZCS). Despite the fact that CZCS was an experimental mission intended to last only one year, the sensor continued to generate a valuable time-series of data over selected test sites until early 1986. Ten years passed before other sources of ocean-colour data became available with the launch of other sensors, and in particular the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view sensor (SeaWiFS) in 1997 on board the NASA SeaStar satellite. Subsequent sensors have included NASA's Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard the Aqua and Tearra satellites and ESA's MEdium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) onboard its environmental satellite Envisat. Several new ocean-colour sensors have recently been launched, including the Indian Ocean Colour Monitor (OCM-2) on-board ISRO's Oceansat-2 satellite and the Korean Geostationary Ocean Color Imager (GOCI), which is the first ocean colour sensor to be launched on a geostationary satellite. More ocean colour sensors are planned over the next decade by various space agencies.

Ocean Colour Radiometry and its derived products are also seen as a fundamental Essential Climate Variable as defined by the Global Climate Observing System. Ocean colour datasets provide the only global synoptic perspective of primary production in the oceans, giving insight into the role of the world's oceans in the global carbon cycle.